This Wonder Bird Flies Thousands of Miles, Non-Stop, as Part of an Epic Migration

It is a dangerous business. There is a floating mass of vegetation, grassy hummocks and stunted black spruce trees that stretch for miles in every direction, with the mountains of the Alaska Range shining in the distance. Few trails exist. Each step sinks into a few inches of water as you walk here. It feels like the ground might give way. Sometimes it does. A wrong step can cause the uninitiated to go into thigh-deep water. The mosquitoes are looking for any exposed flesh. moose emerge from groves of dwarf trees
One of the world's premier ultra-endurance athletes lives here.
The article is from the January/February issue of the magazine.

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Hudsonian godwits nest on the ground. The diet here consists of insects like mosquitoes and flies. Groo is a woman.

Long-distance migration is the most dangerous thing an animal can do. The distances that migratory shorebirds cover and their tiny size make them the most miraculous journeys of all. The journey from the top of the globe to the bottom and back every year is made by some 70 species of shorebirds.
The godwit is a Hudsonian. Hudsonian godwits lay their eggs in this Alaskan bog, which is named after the Canadian bay where the species was first identified. The godwits breed in the Northern Hemisphere. They leave their self-sufficient hatchlings and head south in June or July. They fly for three days to the wetlands and feed for a month. They will travel 4,000 miles to the northern Amazon. They feed again and a week later head to Argentina, feeding another time before continuing over the Andes to Chiloé Island, on the fecund Gulf of Ancud, where they arrive in September or October and winter for a little over six months.
The return from Chile is the longest leg of their journey. They fly at speeds between 29 and 50 miles per hour and don't stop to eat, drink or rest. They stop for a couple of weeks in the central United States to refill their tanks and then go back to their Alaskan home. They want an endless summer.

In person, the Hudsonian godwit is prepossessing, sleek and reddish brown and gold in its Alaskan spring breeding colors, with slender stiltlike legs and a very long, upturned bill specially designed for feeding in mud. If you want to study Hudsonian godwits, you will need a well-camouflaged, soup-cup-size nest on the ground. You can scare the mother bird into flight if you find it.
Nathan Senner is an assistant professor of ornithology at the University of South Carolina. He is accompanied by his wife and fellow ornithologist, Maria Stager. They are waiting for the long-legged, long-billed mother bird to fly up, shriek and scold, leaving her fourmoss-brown eggs exposed.
I knew a mystery that I could help out with.
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Hudsonian godwit migration has been studied by Senner since 2004, and he first monitored the birds in 2009. Groo is a woman.

A problem with this tactic is that some females are so hard-wired to protect their brood, they won't fly away from the nest entirely even when you're close enough to step on them.

The incubation switch is the holy grail for finding a nest. When the male returns home from feeding on mollusks and marine worms in the Gulf of Alaska, it happens. As he zooms in to take over the duties, the researchers spot him. The male went to the ground and the female came up. There is the nest.

Senner and his team found 15 nests. It takes 24 hours to find one in the late spring in Alaska. Senner picks up the eggs and puts them in a small plastic cup filled with water. In one case, an angry mother godwit casts an angry eye from the top of a nearby tree and dive bombs the research crew to defend her nest. Senner ducks the angry bird. The height and angle of the floating egg indicates when the chick will hatch, and his goal is to find the babies within hours after they have pecked their way out of their shells.

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Eggs are hidden in a grassy nest. 25 percent of Hudsonian godwits survive their first migration after laying a clutch of four eggs. Groo is a woman.

Many birds are altricial. They need parental care before they learn to fly because they are helpless at birth, featherless, eyes closed and nest bound. Godwits and other ground nesters are precocial birds. The hatchlings are ready to go a couple of hours after they emerge, snapping at flies and mosquitoes. This immediate self-sufficiency also helps them avoid being eaten in the nest by a mew gull or a fox. They will be hard to find and therefore lost to the cause of research after a few hours. Senner is not worried. He says he has never missed a hatch.

A newly hatched Hudsonian god weighs less than one ounce, but before it sets off on its journey to the other end of the world, it bulks itself up to more than 12 times that weight. Scientists who study these birds admit to not knowing many important facts about them, from how they use magnetic forces to how they read weather systems. Answers to initial questions can lead to more vexing ones.
Senner comes here in the spring to find out why the Hudsonian godwits and other migratory shorebird species are in decline. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, one of the world's leading bird research institutions, co-authored a New York Times op-ed about migratory shorebirds that concluded, "Numbers of some species are falling so." The number one crisis facing birds is due to this free fall, which is why far-flung teams of researchers around the globe are working harder than ever to uncover the mysteries of migratory shorebirds.

Senner has been in the world of shorebirds for most of his life. He says he grew up with godwits. He was a serious birdwatcher when he was a kid, hiking with his parents on a coastal trail near his Anchorange home, where godwits were a common sight. Stanley was the executive director of the Audubon state office in Alaska and was part of the scientific team that responded to the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The challenge of protecting birds was a topic of conversation for young Nate.
Senner has a kinship with these migrants because of his passion for marathons, which gives him even more respect for the marathoners of the bird world. His best time is 2:29.10

Senner has a wealth of bird knowledge in his head and is 40. He worked on shorebird biology with the USGS in Alaska as an undergrad at Carleton College. He earned his PhD at Cornell and worked as a researcher at the Global Flyway Network.
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A godwit mother is watching researchers explore a nest. Groo is a woman.

Senner says he never thought much about Hudsonian godwits until he learned that they were one of the rare birds in North America. They traveled to Alaska to see them. I knew a mystery that I could help out with. He was curious about where the godwits went after they left.

He was awarded a fellowship after earning his degree, which allowed him to travel the world. He went to South America to find out more about godwit migration. He says that there was an explosion of technology that allowed them to blow the doors off all of the questions they had no idea about.

Researchers were able to see where migratory birds went on their journeys. This was a big revelation. For hundreds of years, where birds went when they left one place and returned months later was a mystery. The ancient ocean-going Polynesians had knowledge of seasonal bird routes, but most of the world was in the dark.

People thought birds hibernated rather than migrate. One 16th-century Swedish bishop claimed that birds rose to the surface at the beginning of the spring after sinking into the mud at the bottom of lakes or rivers. Charles Morton believed the birds made a landing on the moon. Unless it were to the moon, he wrote,Whither should these creatures go.

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A godwit egg. The godwits' eggs are pear-shaped and come in a variety of colors. Groo is a woman.

It wasn't until the 18th century that experts realized that some birds were traveling to warmer climates. A white stork was impaled by an African spear and flown to Europe in 1822. 24 more pfeilstorchs have been found in Europe in the years since the Germans called it a pfeilstorch.

Bird banding was the first method to shed light on the migration mystery. John James Audubon found that birds banded with strings on their legs returned to their nest the following year. The first metal bands for scientific research were put on the legs of 23 black-crowned night herons by the researcher Paul Bartsch.
The American Bird Banding Association assumed oversight of all banding efforts in 1909. A researcher named Frederick C. Lincoln created the modern science of bird tracking, improving banding methods as well as recordkeeping, and used the data to advocate for the preservation of migratory birds.
Most of the Hudsonian godwit's breeding grounds were in remote parts of Northern Canada. Hudsonian godwits that had been banded in Canada showed up in Argentina. The godwits without bands were also in Chile. It was still a mystery where they had been.

When albatrosses became the first birds to be fixed with satellite tracking devices, the science of bird tracking took a quantum leap. The weight of a silver dollar was placed on two Swainson's hawks in California in 1994. A growing number of birds weren't returning from their winter migration and the Biologist was concerned He had known for a long time that these hawks went somewhere on the pampas of Argentina in the winter. He and his colleagues were shocked when they arrived in Argentina and found hundreds and thousands of Swainson's hawks dead on the ground. The birds were 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- Tracking led to an international uproar. The Argentine government took action and the number of hawks recovered.

In 2007, Senner was interested in a study in which satellite transmitters were attached to 16 bar-tailed godwits in New Zealand. The birds had traveled 6,300 miles from New Zealand to the Yellow Sea. They flew 4,500 miles to southwestern Alaska to breed after six weeks. The big surprise came at the end of the breeding season.
A bird named E-7 landed on a beach on the north island of New Zealand a week after it left western Alaska. The longest nonstop migration of a land bird was eight days in the air. This bird has been bested. The bar-tailed godwit that set the current record spent more than 11 days in the air, covering 8,100 miles.

In 2008, Senner fastened a device to the leg of a Hudsonian godwit, who lived in the home of another population of Hudsonian godwits. They are cheaper and less precise than the gps transmitters. They record sunrises and sunsets as the bird flies, storing information that reveals where it traveled.

In 2009, Senner found a tiny tracking device that the Hudsonian godwit had been wearing. He wondered how far away his subjects had traveled as he removed the device from the bird's leg. He said his hands were shaking. I went back to the research station and connected it to my computer.
Marathoning is not a good metaphor for them. It is more accurate to say they have a power.
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Every year, the godwit flies from pole to pole, staying in flight for days without stopping. The map shows the flight of a single Hudsonian godwit over the course of a year.

He learned that the bird had left its winter range in Tierra del Fuego and traveled 6,000 miles until it reached the coast of Texas. The godwit earned the silver medal for nonstop long-distance flying, just behind the bar-tailed godwit. It turned out that godwits could fly all the way to Latin America without ever needing to land.

Theunis Piersma, Senner's former mentor at the University of Groningen, is still amazed by the skills involved in this feat. shorebirds can execute these migrations with the help of Piersma. It is difficult to pick one thing out because there is so much.
A migrating bird has to master a number of things, including distance, time-keeping, navigation, predicting weather, flying at high altitudes, social communication and all of the physiological challenges. He says thatMammals are not the biggest evolutionary success. Birds are better at everything.

There is an argument about whether the migrations of the terns are more impressive than the migrations of godwits. Senner ignores it with a wave of his hand. He jokes that they are always duking it out with the tern people. The difference is that the tern does not complete such long stretches. It doesn't need to go through the preflight transformation that the Hudsonian and bar-tailed godwits do.

packing on fat is the most important preparation. They eat worms, dime-size clams, and a variety of other tasty things over a couple of months. Their performance is unaffected by the added fat.
Christopher Guglielmo is a researcher at the University of Western Ontario. Obese super athletes: fat-fueled migration in birds and bats is one of his papers. Birds evolved a system to use fat instead of sugars. The fat load they burn is ten times more efficient than the humans do. This may be the most important key to their success. They keep hydrated by storing the fat in advance. A marathon runner can grab a cup of water from the sidelines. Birds do not have that ability. They make carbon dioxide and water when they burn fat. It is called metabolic water. Their fat stores are acting as canteens. Marathoning is not a good metaphor for them. Marathoners can hit the wall, but they can't. They don't drink for a week. It is more accurate to say they have a power.
Recent findings defy models that have been used by researchers for the cost of flight to birds. Birds should leave after 3 to 4.5 days according to Guglielmo. I don't know how they do it for a week or more.
Unpacking the powers of these birds could lead to medical breakthrough for humans. Understanding how they handle their fat has a lot of implications. Birds look like they have diabetes. A typical bird has high blood sugar concentrations. We don't see any of the side effects of diabetes.

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A Hudsonian godwit is in the air. Hudsonians are distinguished from other godwits by the black areas under the wings. Groo is a woman.

As godwits prepare for departure, there are other adventures. Bar-tailed godwits double or triple the size of their pectoral muscles, their heart and their lungs ahead of migration to better power their flight, according to research. They shrink their organs to make up for it. Their bodies adjust after they arrive. The testes of red knot sandpipers grow to 30 times their winter size as they head north to breed. Birds grow new neurons to help with navigation.
The wings and bodies are very aerodynamic. While flying, migratory birds get shut-eye on one side of the brain while the other side stays awake and alert, and then switch sides, which is called uni-hemispheric slow wave sleep. This is how dolphins and whales sleep.

It's a good thing that migratory birds have more efficient respiratory systems than other animals because they fly at altitudes where there is less oxygen than at sea level. Before migration, bar-tailed godwits increase the number of red blood cells so they can take more oxygen out of the air. They breathe in air after it passes through their lungs.
The way-finding abilities of migratory birds are among the most remarkable. Godwits don't just take off for New Zealand with a compass. They travel quickly across the Pacific and Americas. They have a very sophisticated understanding of what lies ahead, and how best to handle it, from low-pressure systems to wind regimes and rain. Piersma said that they would have a hard time doing with all of the information. They play with the winds in a number of ways. They understand weather systems. It is just incredible.

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Hudsonian godwits walk along a beach and look for food on Chiloé Island. Groo is a woman.

Adding all of the tools birds use to migrate seems to get at only a part of the story. Researchers are still looking for a more complete explanation. A magnetic sense has been known to play a role, but the mechanism hasn't been proven. One idea is that the birds have magnetite crystals in their beaks that respond to the earth's magnetism and guide them on their way. Magnetite can be found in the inner ears of animals. One of the leading hypotheses is that bird vision is connected to magnetic lines on the earth's surface, a phenomenon of physics that Einstein once called "spooky action at a distance."
When I ask Piersma what the mechanism is, he shrugs. Without a strong magnetic sense you can't explain a lot of the navigation performance. When we follow them with a tracker, we feel like they have the same geographic knowledge as we do.
One of the most important questions in the bird world is how they communicate among themselves, and how they share information during migration. Only a quarter of young birds survive the Alaskan gantlet, but 90 percent of adults survive the slings and arrows of their southward migration. Birds that travel in groups form a collective intelligence, a group mind that makes better decisions than a single bird.

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The Hudsonian godwit has gray feathers that can be used in an Alaskan wetlands. Its breeding colors are brown and red. Groo is a woman.

The beaks of migratory shorebirds are sophisticated, with an upper bill that can flex up independently from the rest of the bill, and they are also equipped with highly evolved adaptations for flight and migration. The Herbst corpuscles cluster at the tips of their beaks. The shorebirds can sense the movement of prey with their beaks plunged into the mud and sand.
There is a reason for migration. The long periods of daylight allow the birds to enjoy more feeding time. High latitudes are rich in foods that shorebirds love. There are 50,000 gem clams in one square meter of mud in the Bohai Bay of northern China. There are lots of insects for the young ones when they hatch.

A few weeks before the summer solstice, under a nickel-gray Alaskan sky, Senner makes his nest rounds and finds that the mossy brown, spotted egg shells are being starred by the chick. He holds the egg to his ear.
The babies are starting to break through the shell the next day. Senner is excited. He says it's tonight. Maybe tomorrow.
The hatching is almost two days late. Senner says that none of the eggs have hatched by June 1. After a few days, his daily rounds find the chick are starting to hatch. The babies are whistling. He has not missed a hatch.
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Newly hatched chick nestle with their sibling's egg. Groo is a woman.

At the first nest, he sits down and scoops the chick up, cradling them in his hands, as the fierce mother godwit watches from above. Puleo is a graduate student. He takes a drop of blood, weighs them, measures their legs, head and bill size, and places a small radio transmitter on the back of half the chick to follow them. For the first four weeks, he will be able to understand more about their habits and mortality. The transmitters will fall off after the first migration. Every chick has a small plastic tag on its legs.
Senner heads to the next nest after the procedures are finished. He says the godwit parents return to the nest after his measurements.
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There is a flock of Hudsonian godwits on the shore of Chiloé Island. There are more than 21,000 birds that migrate here each year. Groo is a woman.

Senner says that birds aren't falling out of the sky. I think the problems are getting worse.

The adult godwits leave here in June or July and arrive in Chiloé Island in September or October to spend the next several months there and return north in April. The self-sufficient chick make their first migration from Alaska to central Canada at the end of July, without adult supervision. It is not yet known if they will make other portions of their first migration unassisted. Another shorebird mystery is how they are able to do that. A Hudsonianwit god is around 10 to 12 years old. The hatchlings will make the global crossing as many as 24 times.
The data gathered here and on the Chilean end will help fill out the unknowns of this bird, and researchers hope that it will offer assistance to a species in decline. There are less than 70,000 Hudsonian godwits. The population in the province has fallen. The population of Alaska may be declining. The bar-tailed god population has declined in recent years. The answer to why is a big part of the work.
Many places are copying what Senner is doing. Researchers in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas are working with partners on the other side of the world. They hope to fill in the pieces of the migratory bird puzzle and come up with strategies to conserve birds.

Many of the problems that these birds face are unknown, so there is a long list of disparate challenges. A changing climate that has altered weather patterns and created a mismatch between the time the godwit babies hatch and peak insect abundance is the main culprit in the decline of the Hudsonian godwits. The bugs are mostly gone when the chicks emerge from their shells. The bugs are plentiful when they hatch in Alaska, but if their numbers are declining, it may be because of their single stop in the central U.S. Senner has a PhD student studying that.

Senner says that birds aren't falling out of the sky. I think the problems are getting worse. They don't gain enough weight before they leave, they hit head winds, water isn't where they found it before, and they arrive in Alaska and it's warmer than expected. That is how the declines are happening.
Civilization is built on the weather. The birds will tell us what is going on if we listen to them.

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Juan Navedo is farewelling a godwit on Chiloé Island. When the bird reaches Alaska, Senner's team will see it. Groo is a woman.

Senner began communicating with Juan G. Navedo, a Spanish Biologist who works with a team of students and biologists. Navedo, who heads the Bird Ecology Lab at the University of Austral de Chile, says tourism is one of the main threats to godwits outside of their breeding areas. There is a lot of development on the shoreline. It is a big problem. Birds are killed by hunters, people build shanties in their feeding grounds, locals gather red algae with ox carts and tractors to provide agar for the manufacture of cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, and piles of trash add to the constellation of threats. The Packard Foundation and the National Audubon Society supported the Center for the Study and Conservation of Natural Heritage in securing a roosting site on Chiloé Island.

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The Hudsonian godwit is being studied to determine its age. The birds have seasonal fertility cycles. Groo is a woman.

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A researcher removes a godwit that was captured in a cannon net. Groo is a woman.

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A member of the research team releases a bird into the wild. Groo is a woman.

Navedo is worried about the chemicals and antibiotics that wash up on the shore from the massive salmon-rearing pens in the Gulf of Ancud. Birds who live there carry high levels of antibiotic-resistantbacteria, which they eat from the worms they eat. At a time, Navedo and his students catch 30 to 40 birds at a time with cannon nets.

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The Hudsonian godwit is one of the few tree species that can grow in the wet and cold Alaskan soil. Groo is a woman.

There aren't any concerns about crowds of people at Beluga, Alaska. The researchers are the only people in the landscape. A Hudsonian godwit mama roosts at the top of a black spruce, watching as Senner goes about his business with her babies.
My time with the godwits has helped me realize that what we see in these magnificent creatures is not only a bird, but the result of millions of years of sculpting and tweaking by evolutionary pressures. That makes their decline even more sad. As augurs, I see them more and more as the Romans did. Civilization is built on the weather. The birds will tell us what is going on if we listen to them.
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